Dr. Orji Kalu, the audacious former governor of Abia State and former President Olusegun’s Obasanjo’s “enfant terrible” is a very big fan of this concept: ‘100 Fathers of the Famous’. But each time I try to pin him down to talk about his father, he parries it like a skillful boxer, giving one excuse after another and making one to wonder: What is it about his father that is keeping him mute, particularly when the news of his mother is always in the air? After much pressure, he finally caved in to tell the story of his father—the story of a father he didn’t really get on with, so to speak. This is Orji Kalu’s father’s story, told in all frankness, as you have never heard it before:

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A father and a dad are not necessarily the same thing. Every child has a father, but not every child has a dad. A father is a biological word. But dad has emotional and affectional connotation.
Like everyone else, I have a father. How would I have come into this world, if I don’t have a father? The problem is that my mother is more visible. People are used to hearing more of my mother than my father.

My father, I would say, is completely out of the media radar. Not many people have heard of him and not many have seen his photograph in the media, but he is there. He is still alive. He lives in Aba. He is by name Johnson Uzor Kalu.
As it is very well known, I am from Igbere and my father is from Igbere. Like every Igbere man, he is a trader. My mother is a trader. And I am a trader. The degree and size of trading between me and my parents may differ, but we are all traders all the same.

The truth is that I am not that close to my father. I was never that close. A lot of factors are responsible for this gap, or what I would call distance between father and son.
My father had two wives. Polygamy. And that was the genesis of the problem. My mother is the first wife. There were six of us from my mother. Three boys and three girls. The three girls died, leaving only the boys. My stepmother has two boys and two girls.

Talking about parental love, every child loves his or her mother, especially where there are two wives. In a polygamous home, every child always went back to his mother’s kitchen. I believe my father did not treat my mother well, but it does not disturb our relationship which remains cordial.
We agree, disagree but we also tell each other the truth. Our relationship is cordial, but not excellent. The lesson from the relationship between me and my father is that you can disagree with people and still listen to them. When my father hears about my tribulations in the hands of Obasanjo, he feels like telling me: “I told you to stay out of politics.”
My vision then was to leave my booming business and move into the arena of politics, to contest as governor. But my father did not see eye-to-eye with me in that area. He didn’t want me to go into politics.

His comrade-in-arms against my going into politics was my wife. My wife did not support my going into politics, because she was afraid that everything we had been able to achieve in business would be said to have been acquired with government money. The only person who supported my going into politics was my mother. And that was the point of disagreement between my wife and my mother.
My wife was on my father’s side and I was on the side of my mother, as far as politics is concerned. I inherited my passion for politics from my mother. What people don’t understand is that long before I thought of politics, my mother had been in politics.

But my father was a sort of introvert, who hated anything politics or anything that brought him into the spotlight. He prefers his own privacy. He said he would not support my political ambition and that I should stay in business and be successful. He believed I should have used the money I spent on campaigns to help the poor, provide water and other infrastructure for them.

I went and told my mother and she said I should not mind him. She said my father was living in the past and that the modern day reality is democracy and we all must be involved in the fight for it to survive.
In terms of character, I will say my father is a strong-willed man. My mother is more liberal. You can convince my mother easily, but not my father. You can bend him only with very strong reasons. Like me, you can bend me. I am not that rigid. I listen to advice, especially, if it is superior and on the side of truth.

I have not abandoned my father as such. He does not need rehabilitation. He has everything he needs. Both my parents don’t need anything from me. And that is the truth.
A lot of people have this impression that I am tied to the apron string of my mother and that she teleguided me when I was governor. That is absolutely wrong. I can’t say I am very close to my mother. What people think is not the true representation of things, but my mother is my mother. When I was a governor, many a times, I would not see my mother for six good months. The present governor who was then my Chief of Staff can testify to that. Even now, I have not seen her for a long time.

That’s how far I want to go. I don’t want to go into details of the relationship between me and my father. I don’t want to pre-empt my forthcoming autobiography, entitled, ‘My Life’ which I believe would be the greatest book ever written on earth. I don’t want to sound pompous or sound like a megalomaniac by saying that my book will be the greatest book ever written. I have always believed in having a larger-than-life vision. I have always believed in dreaming the biggest dream ever. Everybody who wants to be somebody in life has to dream big. The sending of man to the moon started with what looks like an impossible dream then, when President John F. Kennedy envisioned it. But it became a reality. In my dictionary, the word impossible does not exist. So should it be, for everyone who wants to achieve something in life.